Sunday, December 1, 2013

This weekend, we’ve begun what’s
supposed to be a happy time, “the most wonderful time of the year,” as the song
says: the secular world’s Holiday Season.As far as the sales circulars are concerned, it actually began not with
the Black Friday door-busters, or even with the innovative guilty pleasure of
Thanksgiving-Day sales, but with a new holiday sub-season – “Black Friday Week,” which, honest to God, I saw on a
billboard while driving around town.But
if shopping isn’t where you find the true meaning of the Holiday Season, there
are always the holy obligations of parties and preparations, making plans and
lists and appearances, trying to cram as much as we can into this month of
anxious relaxation.

Deep down – along with Charlie Brown in
my favorite of the old TV Christmas specials – deep down, we may be
wondering:“Isn’t there anyone who knows
what Christmas is all about?!”So Linus,
with his blanket, calmly takes center stage and sets the cartoon world to
rights:“And there were, in the same
country, shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by
night…” (Luke 2:8 KJV).And we church
people breathe deeply as we remember:Oh,
yes, that’s it.That’s our story.The shepherds, the angels, Mary and Joseph,
the baby in the manger, glory to God in the highest.That’s
our story.That’s what we’re getting ready for as we begin the Church’s season
of Advent, our time of watchful expectation.

But … so what?I mean, really:What difference does that story make in a
world that’s either consumed with the secular Holiday Season or that rejects
everything related to Christmas as nothing but crass commercialism?OK, Jesus is coming.What difference does it make?

And the question gets even harder for
those for whom the Holiday Season is a time of quiet desperation.For many of us, we put on a brave face, and
we wish people “Merry Christmas”; but inside, there’s pain and isolation and grief.Maybe it’s about employment; maybe it’s about
money; maybe it’s about relationships with spouses or partners or parents or
children.Maybe it’s about missing
someone terribly or needing our lives actually to mean something.When you’re in that place in life, candy canes don’t offer much sustenance, and
jingle bells don’t speak much hope.In that place in life, especially, I could
imagine looking at the Holiday Season, or even the Church’s season of Advent,
and thinking, “So what?”

So here’s the first installment of a
sermon series that tries to put some flesh and bones on an answer to that
question, “Jesus is coming … so what?”I
think the answer comes from three directions: from the past, the present, and
the future.

The Old Testament and Gospel readings
this morning point us to the historical experience of our spiritual ancestors,
the people of Israel.The prophet Isaiah
is speaking to the people of Jerusalem and Judah at a time when their nation is
falling apart.In that moment, the
Northern Kingdom, Israel, is being overrun by the Assyrians, who are taking God’s
people into exile.The Southern Kingdom
of Judah will hang on for another century or so, suffering devastating invasions
and sieges, only delaying the inevitable.Their world is crumbling; and the prophets are saying there’s lots of
blame to go around, from the religious and political leaders all the way down
to the regular folks – everyone who’s turned away from following God’s
covenant, just going through the motions of religious observance with no
movement of the heart to accompany it.God’s judgment is coming, Isaiah says just before this morning’s reading,
and the nation will be no more.But even
so, he says, the story is not over.A
remnant will be preserved, Isaiah says.And
“in the days to come,” all the nations shall stream to the mountain of the
Lord’s house, that God “may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his
paths” (2:2-3).Conflicts will no longer
be settled by invading armies but by the sovereign Lord.“They shall beat their swords into
ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks,” Isaiah says; “nation shall
not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore”
(2:4).Destruction may be coming, God
says through the prophet, but destruction is not the last word.The last word comes when God sends the
anointed king, the messiah, who will restore God’s people in their faithfulness
and in their security.The last
word is life made new.

Now fast-forward to the time of the
Gospel reading.The news is not good: Once again, God’s people are on the brink of
disaster.Seven centuries after Isaiah,
Jerusalem is occupied again, only by a different power.Now the Romans are the conquerors, and they
rule through blood and iron.By the time
Matthew’s gospel is written, Jerusalem will be rubble and the Temple will be
destroyed.But even as Jesus tells his
followers about the destruction to come, he too says that judgment is not the
last word.The Temple will be torn down; there will be “wars
and rumors of wars” (Matthew 24:6); and the people will know terrible
suffering.But afterward, the messiah,
God’s anointed ruler, will appear out of the clouds of heaven and gather the
faithful remnant.He will come out of
nowhere – like the flood of Noah, like a thief in the night.So keep awake, Jesus says, and be ready.Salvation is near, despite the present
darkness, despite what life tells you.Your experience may feel hopeless, but that is not God’s story line.Jesus
will return to set the world to rights.The last word is not oppression by violent powers you can’t hope to
overcome.The last word is life made
new.

Now fast-forward 2,000 years and jump
from Palestine to Kansas City.Hopelessness still haunts us; it just looks different now.I’m sitting with a couple whose marriage is
dissolving.There’s been injury on both
sides, failure to honor the image of God in each other.On one side, the harm has been recent; on the
other, it’s been happening for years.We
talk for an hour about how each partner must honor what the other needs for the
relationship to grow in a healthy direction.It will mean hard work, the reorientation of two hearts.It will mean compromise.It will mean change.Our conversation is coming to an end, and
neither one of them is feeling like the odds are in their favor; but I assure
them that, yes, they can come back from all this, stronger than they ever
were.One spouse, beaten down, looks at
me doubtfully and asks, “Why do you think so?”And I am blessed with words that are not mine.God’s prophetic Spirit speaks up instead, and
I hear myself saying, “I know you can come back from this because that’s the
story of our faith.If what we believe
means anything, it’s this: that resurrection happens.God came to be with us in Jesus, and Jesus
still comes to be with us in our joy and
in our pain.We screw up, but
forgiveness is always an option.We are
not stuck in the choices we’ve made or in the harm that’s been done to us; we
can always be transformed.The last word
is not death.The last word is life made
new.”

So to anyone wondering what difference
it makes for Christ to come into our broken world and into our broken lives,
I’d say this:Jesus comes to change the
game.Jesus comes to reset our
expectations.Jesus comes to make life
new.When we reach those moments that
makes us cry out, “Isn’t there anything more than this?,” God’s answer is a
resounding, “Absolutely.”Everything around us may point to the gloom
and darkness of impossibility.Hostile
forces may be assembled around us, holding us under siege.And precisely then, Jesus comes to us and says, “People, look east.Turn your face and see your situation from
the other side.This dark moment is no
ending but a beginning; and to those sitting in darkness, light will shine.”For even in the darkest hour, when there
seems no way out, that’s when Christ intervenes to remind us that God
specializes in lost causes.It’s been
God’s pattern in the past, and it’s still God’s forecast for the future – when
the Son of Man comes “in power and great glory” and sends out his angels “with
a loud trumpet call” to “gather his elect from the four winds” – and makes life
new again (Matthew 24:30-31).

So no matter what your present and
personal darkness may be, making Christmas lights seem crass and cheap, God speaks
these words: “There is hope.”Relationships on life support can find their resurrections.Lives on autopilot can find the meaning only
love can bring.The walls of
long-standing conflicts can be broken down.Illness of body, or mind, or spirit can be touched by healing
grace.Jesus came to us, and comes to
us, and will come to us again in order to set the world to rights.For darkness is not God’s desire for beloved
children like us.Instead, Jesus comes as
God-With-Us, whispering through the din of our conflicts and concerns:“I am with you; I will heal you; and your
tomorrow will be made new.”

Sunday, November 24, 2013

[Sermon from the conclusion of the Centennial celebration at St. Andrew's Episcopal Church, Kanasa City, Mo., Nov. 24, 2013. Celebrating the Feast of St. Andrew. ]

As many of you know, a group of 13 of us recently returned from a mission trip to Haiti. It’s an annual journey to build relationships with our partners in this work of educating and feeding about 200 children near the mountain town of Maniche. Now, the trip isn’t all work, of course. Every evening, we gathered around a table on the veranda at our guest house, reeking of DEET to stop the mosquitos and enjoying a Prestige beer or a little Barbancourt rum. After reviewing the day we’d spent, we’d have a little theological reflection before praying Compline.

One evening, the reflection turned to our identity as sojourners in that very different place. There we were on a mission trip. And what would you call those sent by God on a mission? Maybe … "missionaries."

Well, that didn’t go over so well. No one around that table saw him- or herself as a missionary, in the sense we usually hear that word. In a darker time of Church history, missionaries brought their supposedly superior understandings of God and modern life to the ignorant peoples of distant lands. We didn’t see ourselves that way. Plus, there were some more personal stumbling blocks: As missionaries, wouldn’t we have to talk about Jesus out loud, probably in fairly obnoxious ways? That didn’t fit for any of us – including me. As I told the group, I grew up in a household where basically the only articulation of our personal faith was saying grace before meals – and that was a prayer we’d all memorized. We talked about church a lot; and we made fun of the stereotypical fundamentalists, going on about how Jesus was their personal Lord and Savior and all that. But sharing my faith? Right. There was no chance, growing up, that I’d be the kind of person to stand up in a pulpit and preach about Jesus. Hmmmm. Yet, here I am. And yet, there we were around that table, people sent by God on a mission. Hard to say we weren’t missionaries, as ill-fitting as that word might seem.

My hunch is that our spiritual ancestor, St. Andrew, wouldn’t have called himself a missionary either. As the Gospel reading describes it, here’s a fisherman who’s been listening to the preaching of John the Baptist – now there’s a missionary, right? Crazy clothes, fiery sermons, great entertainment value. So Andrew is there with John the Baptist when John sees what he’s been looking for: "Look, here is the Lamb of God," John says, pointing at Jesus. Here’s the messiah! So Andrew’s curious, and he goes to Jesus; but there’s no direction, no command. Jesus simply says, "What are you looking for? … Come, and see." (John 1:38,39) So Andrew does, and something happens. We aren’t told exactly what turns his heart, but something makes him run home to find the person he cares about most, his brother, Simon. He’s about to burst; he has to tell his brother what he’s seen. "We have found the Messiah!" Andrew says. And he brings his brother with him to see Jesus. The fisherman has become a missionary, without even realizing it. The one seeking life for himself had become the one with life to share.

That’s our story as a congregation, too. St. Andrew’s might seem like a pretty unlikely group of people to describe as missionaries. More likely, especially a few decades ago, you might have heard this description: "The country club at prayer." The stereotypical St. Andrew’s member may not come to mind as an exemplar of missionary zeal. But it’s in our spiritual DNA. At the diocesan convention that created St. Andrew’s, Bishop Partridge explained that we were being planted on the southern frontier of Kansas City because "our own city – right here – is our greatest and most crying mission field."1 In our first 50 years, as we saw in the video last night, St. Andrew’s reached thousands, growing to be one of the largest Episcopal congregations in the country. We planted a church in Red Bridge, then the city’s new southern frontier. Later, we experimented with new styles of worship to draw in people looking for something other than organ music and Elizabethan prayers. We built small groups; we took mission trips; we literally moved houses to make room for people to park; we created a community youth center across the street. As the plaque down here to my left reveals, we have never been simply "the country club at prayer." This plaque was given by St. Peter’s, the congregation we planted; and it honors St. Andrew’s as a people of "missionary zeal." It says so right there; you can come and see.

In the beginning, God spoke creation into being through Christ the Word, who was with God and who was God, as John’s Gospel says. That Word was all it took for the future to begin. Today, God is still speaking the future into being; and maybe God’s most amazing ongoing miracle is that it happens through us. We are not passive observers of divine work; we are the ones sent to carry out the healing, saving, reconciling mission God wants to realize for the world God loves. As today’s readings put it, that creative Word is very near us, burning in our hearts and leaping from our lips; and God sends us to bring that Word to the people we’re given to know and serve.

What does that look like, here and now? Well, one step is that we’ll be taking communication more seriously as a parish in the next year. We’re doing the work to figure out how to market ourselves – it’s probably about time we did that – and we’re seeking the right person to help make it happen. Building our capacity to share the Good News is one of the reasons why your pledge for 2014 matters so much, why we’re asking you to exercise holy courage in your giving of time, talent, treasure.

But speaking God’s future into being also looks more personal than church marketing. Led by Meg Townsend, our Communications Commission is developing resources to help free us from our fear of speaking about our faith so that the people who make up the body of Christ can have something concrete and compelling to say about it. Like Andrew, we need to be able to tell people how God is up to something in our church and in our lives – and then ask people to come and see. As Paul puts it in the reading from Romans: "How are they to hear without someone to proclaim him?" (10:14).

"And," Paul continues, "how are they to proclaim him unless they are sent?" (10:15). We may have been established here on the corner of Meyer and Wornall for the better part of 100 years, but we are still a people on the move, a people sent on God’s mission. That mission leads us to our most creative work – to speak a new expression of church into being, alongside this strong, beautiful, familiar one. That is the church we’re beginning to create with the Take 5 service, which starts this Saturday evening. It’s a church experience that reverses the traditional model and says, "First belong, then become, then believe." Along with new worship, we’re going out to engage with people where they are – building community in coffee shops and bars, learning what kind of new life our neighborhood needs and seeing how we can join with the Holy Spirit in bringing it about. This is why we’ve called Fr. Marcus. This is why we’re asking the questions about what it would take to make HJ’s a place where we can connect with our community – and where our community would want to connect with us.

As is always God’s pattern, this new growth has timeless roots. It’s a new-old church that God is speaking into being, a church of the ancient future: A community that might gather around yoga or a running club or a book discussion at Bella Napoli before it ever gathers around an altar for Eucharist. It’s a community that might gather first to support a neighborhood school and later on decide to gather for praise and worship. And that praise and worship will happen not in a beautiful old structure like this one, where we’re separated from each other, stretched out the length of a football field, but instead gathered around God’s altar as a family gathers around its table. This is new for us, but it is also old. It’s a fresh expression of church alongside the traditional one, but it’s still rooted in Scripture, tradition, and reason. It’s a different model of reaching those who claim no organized faith, the "spiritual but not religious"; but it’s basically the same model the ancient Celts used to evangelize Britain. So, to me, there’s a clear message in all this: Do not fear. Do not fear. For Jesus does not call us on missions we are not equipped to pursue. Jesus calls us into precisely what he needs us to accomplish. And with that promise, there is no room for fear.

And what’s more, in God’s extraordinary economy of goodness and love, that call to mission also has the power to soothe our weary souls. In Maniche, Haiti, two Sundays ago, your band of unlikely missionaries went to church, and your unlikely missionary preacher was having a bit of a rough morning. We’d already had one service, at the big church in Les Cayes; so I’d already had one experience of stumbling through a liturgy in a foreign language and in someone else’s space. Worse than that, I felt like I had bungled the sermon the first time around, despite the translator’s best efforts to make me sound good. Now the environment was working against me, too. By the time we made the trek up the mountain to Maniche, the sun has risen higher; and the vestments that had been warm at 7 a.m. were now getting soaked with sweat. I offered the sermon a second time, and thankfully it improved with age. But I was still uncomfortable in body and in spirit, and the sweat pouring down my face only made matters worse. The time came for the Peace, and I was out in the congregation, greeting people at random. I looked down, and there was a little girl, one of our students, I think. I leaned down to take her hand, and said, "La paix du Seigneur" – the Peace of the Lord. The little girl looked at me, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw her hand come up toward my face. She held a cloth, and she started mopping the sweat off my forehead. Gently, she dabbed and stroked my strange, white face. And in that moment – in about as foreign an environment as I could imagine, utterly different from everyone else there, doing work I often feel I have no business doing – in that moment, I was completely welcomed, completely at home. Unlikely missionary though I was, I realized I was precisely where I was supposed to be – both for "them" and for me. The touch of Jesus Christ himself, wiping the sweat from my brow, said, "Thank you. Thank you for being faithful enough at least to go where I sent you."

The same is true for us. We have worked hard, as St. Andrew’s parish, to reveal God’s kingdom for the past 100 years. We’ve had our days of great success, and we’ve had our seasons of struggle. We haven’t always been comfortable with the missions on which our Lord has sent us. But still, in the midst of it all, Jesus comes to us and wipes the brows of us unlikely missionaries; and he says, "Well done, good and faithful servants. Well done – but don’t stop there. Keep speaking my church into being," Jesus says, "with the words of this present time and place."

As we have done for 100 years, so we will do in this new day. We will keep going to the surprising people to whom God sends us. We will keep speaking hope with a voice we barely knew we had. We will join with Christ, giving voice to his heart, healing his brothers and sisters with a word of new life. And so we will keep speaking a new church into being, sharing the Spirit’s voice with the neighbors God has given us to serve, now and for the next 100 years.

Monday, November 11, 2013

We’ve left Hosanna House, and I’m writing this on the
drive from Cayes to Port au Prince.We
went to Maniche earlier than usual today, leaving about 6:45 a.m. in order to
be at the school for its opening ceremony.It’s a great illustration of how the school is seeking to form the kids
both as Christians and as Haitians.The
headmaster calls the kids to order, and they line up in the school yard, outside
their classrooms.As the children sing
the national anthem, the Haitian flag is raised.Next, the kids sing “How Great Thou Art” (a
hymn you hear frequently in Haiti, oddly enough) and pray the Lord’s
Prayer.Then they file into their rooms
to begin the day’s learning.

It illustrates one of the most pervasive aspects of
Haitian culture – the blurring of the sacred and the secular.Really, it goes deeper than that.For Haitians, it’s not so much that sacred
and secular are blurred; it’s that they are one – life itself.Certainly the most entertaining way to notice
this, day in and day out, is in the signage.First, there are the tap-taps – the brightly colored vehicles, from
pick-ups to school buses, that provide public transport here.On nearly every tap-tap are painted proclamations.A few are surreal (“Just Do It,” with the
Nike swoosh), but many of them are statements of faith.On one afternoon, I noted these:“Espirit de Dieu” (the Spirit of God),
“Christ Revient” (Christ Will Return), “La Benediction” (Blessing), “Merci
Signeur” (Thank You, Lord), “Grandeur de Dieu” (Majesty of God), and perhaps the
most theologically pointed in a social context with great suffering: “Sang de
Jesus” (Blood of Jesus).The other
wonderfully entertaining source for documenting the sacred/secular unity here
is the signage on business establishments.All of the following are actual businesses we’ve seen on this trip:Pharmacie de Dieu (Drugstore of God), Christ
Revient (Christ Will Return) Butcher Shop, Pere Eternale Loto (Eternal Father
Lottery), Tout a Jesus Depot (All to Jesus Convenience Store).But most striking was the man I saw today in
his wheelchair on one of Cayes’ main streets.Across the back of the seat, as if the chair were his personal tap-tap,
it read, “Jesus est l’amour de mon coeur” – Jesus is the love of my heart.Back in the States tomorrow, I will see signs
for Target and Quick Trip, and I’ll see bumper stickers proclaiming a kid to be
an honor student; and I’ll know nothing about the faith of the people behind those
signs.

In Maniche this morning, we finished up the photography
and interviewing for the St. Andrew’s Advent cards.There will be hundreds of faces as well as
short bios sharing glimpses of each child’s life: How many siblings she has,
how many hours he walks to school, her favorite subjects in school, what he
wants to be when he grows up.We’ve
spoken with future nurses, teachers, engineers, doctors, lawyers, and even one
boy who said, without a moment’s hesitation, that he wants to be a judge.With education – specifically, by graduating
secondary school – these things are possible.Education is the first and essential ticket out of the mountain village
for these children.

But God willing, places like Maniche will also someday
know a different reality than the present options for one’s “professional life”
– agriculture and reselling goods in the market.Haitians are very industrious, and the business
professionals in our group kept coming up with all kinds of ideas for small
entrepreneurial ventures.So a common
conversation this week has been something like this:“Should we be focusing on improving the
future for a comparatively small number of children in one school, or should we
be exploring how to spur economic development that would benefit the whole
community?”

It’s a great question, the kind of question I think God
wants us to ask as a community of faith constantly discerning how to be in partnership
with others to whom God sends us.I
certainly wouldn’t presume to know the final answer, but maybe we can look to
Jesus for an answer that’s a both/and (which, of course, we Episcopalians like
best).On the one hand, we have the
parable of the good Samaritan, which reminds us of the call to care for the
person in need who happens to be in front of you.For us, the children of Maniche are in front
of us because of a 25-year relationship, and I believe God is asking us not to walk by on the other side of the
road now.On the other hand, in the
Sermon on the Mount, Jesus makes it clear that people in need, generally, have
a preferred place in God’s ordering of things:“Blessed are the poor, for they will inherit the earth.”So if we’re called to bring the reign of God
into the present moment, even as we wait for its fulfillment at the end time,
then we need to work for the community’s development and well-being, too.As is so often true in the life of
discipleship, our relationship with Maniche is complicated and evolving – which
is a blessing, because it shows both St. Andrew’s and St. Augustin’s are taking
the relationship seriously.

[I'm not sure where yesterday's post went, but clearly not to the blog. I'll try it again now.]

"What are you trying to accomplish?" That question feels like the crystallization of our
discernment over the past week.It’s
been a time of reimaging our role as a partner with St. Augustin’s church and
school.In that process, we’ve struggled
to make out what shape our collaboration might take in the future.But just as much, we’ve struggled to see the
shape of our collaboration thus far.We’ve had plenty of discussions of agenda – in the sense of, “Whose
agenda is it?” and “Are we talking with the people who have the greatest stake
in the outcome?” (i.e., our partners themselves).Legitimately, I think, our Haiti team has
said we’ve done a good job consulting our partners and working with them to
identify how we can serve the children at our school and make it a place of
high-quality education.But what we’ve
come to see is twofold:that our
partnership has been centralized in Pere Colbert on the Haiti side, and that we
haven’t been focusing on the richest question.

This week, we’ve learned important things about Pere
Colbert’s pursuit of a collaborative model of leadership in his mission
congregations, as well as the new mandate that parish vestries will now be
responsible for the schools affiliated with them.That means we’ll now have a new relationship
to build – with the vestry of St. Augustin’s, not simply with our partner
priest.We talked with Colbert tonight,
and one of the questions was excruciatingly tactical:How can we communicate with the vestry
members?He affirmed what we had heard
at the school earlier in the week, that none of them have e-mail.So, we’ll have to use the school’s
headmaster, Samuel, as an intermediary – which will actually be a blessing,
because it will force the headmaster and the vestry members to interact more
often.That, too, should strengthen the
partnership.

We’ve also learned that we haven’t been asking our
partners the best question.Thus far,
we’ve been careful to ensure that we fight the old-style missionary impulse to
dictate outcomes by always asking our partners, “What is it that you need?”That has seemed like the right question for a
long time, but it actually falls short.The richer question came from a conversation I had with John Walker,
driving up the mountain today for the second service, at Maniche.(We had already had 7 a.m. church at Pere
Colbert’s church in Cayes.)John and I
came to see that perhaps the real question is this:“What is it that you (our partner) want to
accomplish?”Then the follow-up
questions would be, “What can you bring to that work, and how can we help
achieve it?”That’s not a bad place to
find ourselves understanding our partnership at the end of this week.

So here are some observations from the day that’s now
nearly gone:

·7 a.m. is awfully early for church, especially
if you’re the preacher and you’re being translated to people whose language you
don’t speak.

·In Maniche, for the second service, Pere Colbert
had the lay ministers conduct the service up to the point of the sermon, so
that when we arrived it was time simply to walk in and preach.Hmmmm…..

·We presented Bibles to last year’s graduates of
our school – those who had passed the national 6th grade test and
gone on to begin secondary school.It
was a joy to get to congratulate them ourselves and bless them for their
journey ahead.

·The beach at Port Salud and the lobster grilled
on it are evidence that God is very good.

We packed most of our things tonight and will leave
Hosanna House tomorrow, after visiting Maniche one last time in the
morning.I think I can take the risk to
speak for all of us in saying that we have had enough beans and rice for quite
a while.We aren’t quite dreaming of
cheeseburgers, but it’s close.Still, this
has been an incredibly productive trip, both in terms of the work in the moment
and the work for the future.And if we
can say that, I think it makes Jesus smile.

Saturday, November 9, 2013

All through this week in Cayes and Maniche, we’ve been listening.At least I hope that’s true.It’s certainly the intent – of this trip, of all our trips to Haiti, and of all the trips that Pere Colbert has made to Kansas City.We are partners, St. Augustin’s and St. Andrew’s.Partners listen to each other and learn from each other as they walk their road together.And in a partnership like this, they have the Holy Spirit walking with them, guiding them along the way.

So we have spent much of this trip, I now see, listening to God to learn how we should be listening to each other.Our partnership involves distances that must be bridged, and not just the flight from Miami to Port au Prince.They are distances of difference:different cultural norms, different conceptions of clergy and lay roles, different levels of material wealth, different degrees of power.We all agree that the blans from the States can’t just come in and tell their Haitian “partners” what to do.Instead, we have to ask questions – but it matters how those questions are framed.Do you ask your partners, “What do you want?” – as if their responsibility is to write a grocery list and yours is do the shopping?Do you ask your partners, “What can I do to help you be successful?” – as if their current situation is failure?

We’re listening for the Spirit’s guidance in how to listen because a major change has taken place in the way Episcopal schools are to be run, at least among Pere Colbert’s schools in southern Haiti.In September, he informed the parish vestries that the schools associated with their churches were now the vestries’ responsibilities.Previously, the priest basically had sole authority over the schools; but Pere Colbert is seeking to guide his parishioners into living out their calling as members of the first order of ministry, the laity, by practicing collaborative leadership.To those of us at St. Andrew’s, this should sound familiar.For us, it’s certainly been a transition to move toward a model of collaboration and empowerment among clergy and lay leaders.For Haiti, it’s an ecclesial earthquake, potentially.This is a hierarchical church in a country deeply rooted in hierarchy.So moving toward a collaborative model will mean breaking free of things that have bound us. The new life of resurrection comes with the cost of hard changes along the way.

To unbind us, like Lazarus, and let us go will mean change for the American partners, too.Previously, we collaborated by conferring with Colbert about what he thought the school in Maniche needed and how we could help the quality of education improve there.Now, our partnership will need to branch out to include St. Augustin’s vestry.And if that’s true, then the idea of partnership implies that our vestry will want to take a more committed role, too.It sounds like we’ll need to do a lot more listening all around.So for now, we’ve discerned, the questions for our vestry colleagues at St. Augustin's tomorrow are these:“How does your vestry function to run your church when your priest only comes up the mountain for services once every six weeks?And what do you imagine it might look like for you to have a school under your purview, too?”From there, later, we’ll move to thinking about what they might need, as well as identifying how they’re already well-positioned for that change.And we’ll hear what thoughts and questions they have for us.

And that’s a good thing.Because (to give a glimpse of tomorrow morning’s sermon) we are members of the same body, the Body of Christ, no matter what distances of difference separate us.As members of the same body, we have to be in relationship for the body to function in a healthy and holy way.And relationships change over time as more voices come into the family.So we have to listen to each other, attentive to the Spirit’s prodding coming from those new voices – and we have to be willing to empty ourselves of some control over the outcome.

On a more concrete level….Today was difficult in that two of our members (Cindy Obenhaus and Carolyn Kroh) were sick and needed to stay at the guest house rather than taking part in the second day of the teacher seminar – which was troublesome because it was largely Carolyn’s project, and she should have been able to see it come off so successfully.The teachers were very positive in their evaluations of the material, indicating they learned things they can turn into more engaging learning for the kids.Carolyn and Cindy are better now, the day of rest having served them both well.

Tomorrow, we’re off to 7 a.m. church in Les Cayes – likely a two hour service – followed by the drive up the mountain and another service at Maniche.After that, it’s out to the beach at Port Salud for a swim and dinner.Let’s just say I’ll be grateful when the second sermon tomorrow morning is finished....

Friday, November 8, 2013

We offered the first part of Carolyn Kroh’s
teacher-education seminar today.This is
part of the work that had impressed the Haitian bishop and canon for education,
and it seemed to go over well with the teachers and headmasters, who came from
all the Episcopal schools in the southern district.The training seeks to enhance the first- and
second-grade classes by making the learning more student-centered.So we demonstrated ideas for making math,
science, and language arts more interactive through games and manipulatives,
experiments, and creative ways of reading to kids.Actually, just reading aloud to kids is an
innovation in the very traditional, rote-response model of education Haiti
inherited from the French.Anyway, the
teachers seemed to be having fun playing the games and doing the experiments,
so that might imply good things for the students’ experience, too.

Part of our group also visited the local electric company
today to investigate what it would take to bring electricity to the
school.There is quite a process
involved – not surprising, given the endemic institutional bureaucracy in Haiti
– and the official wouldn’t hazard even a ballpark estimate of the potential
cost.In addition to that, we need to
step back, process all that we’re learning on this trip, get more input from
our Haitian partners, and make come careful decisions about priorities.New construction, electricity, sound systems
and instruments….We need to work
carefully on a long-term plan.

After the seminar, we drove out to the beach at Port Salud
to see the sunset and feast at a little restaurant Stan Shaffer knew.We enjoyed outstanding French cuisine with a
Haitian flare – lobster, crab, and fish dishes in wonderful sauces; and bananas
flambé for dessert.Yes, there are some
real advantages to mission trips in beautiful locations….

And now, the not-so-advantageous part:A cold shower, followed by a coating of 100% DEET
insect repellent before climbing into bed.

Thursday, November 7, 2013

A short post tonight.I’m exhausted, as are many of us.It’s a good kind of exhaustion, but exhaustion nonetheless.

We worked in three teams today:One toured a couple of other Episcopal school
sites to check on the work of a contractor for a possible building project at
our school; one met with the government education minister for the southern district
of Haiti; and one spent the day at the school in Maniche.All the visits were about building relationship,
even the first one.Our interest in
this contractor comes not just from his high-quality finished work but from the
model he uses.For projects like this,
the community partner (in this case, St. Augustin’s Church and School) is
expected to contribute significantly to the building project, most often
manifested as sweat equity – thousands of hours of work.That’s relationship with flesh and bones on
it.

I was on the team that stayed in Maniche all day, and one
reason why is that we had our first-ever meeting with parish leaders from St.
Augustin’s Church.What remains with me (as I fall asleep typing) is a new awareness of the unity of the Body of Christ,
regardless of context.St. Andrew’s and
St. Augustin’s are about as different from each other as you can imagine.And yet, here are the top concerns from the
meeting, and I’ll let you guess which parish’s representatives expressed them:getting a sound system and new instruments so
they can update worship music, attracting younger people from the area around
the church, and encouraging children and youth to be more involved in the life
of the church.It’s a trick question because
the answer is, “Both.”We all are one in
the Body of Christ – even to the extent of sharing the same challenges and the same
priorities for addressing them.So we
talked with St. Augustin’s vestry members about a way to collaborate in
finding, obtaining, and paying for a new sound system and instruments for
Maniche.But I drew the line at letting
them have our new director of music.

Wednesday, November 6, 2013

We made it to the school on our first try this year,
contrary to last year’s experience.The
river was down, making the crossing relatively easy.However, the mud from several days’ light
rain left the “road” in interesting shape.We never really were at risk of being marooned in the water this time,
but getting out and pushing through nasty mud was a real possibility.

The group divided into several teams to work on different
projects. Carolyn Kroh and Rebekah Hyer observed
classroom teaching to get a snapshot of the quality of instruction; another team
took photos of kids and interviewed them for the Advent cards we’ll sell at St.
Andrew’s; another team met with community leaders (a judicial officer and the
mayor of Maniche) to explore how the school and church might develop better
relationships with the community and become a more integral part of it.Among other things, we learned from the two
city leaders that St. Augustin School is regarded as one of the four best in
the district – that parents are choosing our school not just based on proximity
but based on quality.We received a
clear affirmation of that fact on a home visit later in the afternoon.We walked home with several students in order
to meet their parents and get their feedback about the school.After a 45-minute walk through mud and along rough
rock roads, we came to the home of one young girl, Samantha.As we approached her home, we saw the sign a
few yards away for Notre Dame Elementary School – literally a stone’s throw
from Samantha’s house.After our walk,
in the rain, we asked why the family didn’t send Samantha to the school next
door.The answer: Because St. Augustin
offers much better education.It was
heartening to hear.

The discussions with local officials also revealed a fascinating
parallel between conversations at St. Andrew’s and at St. Augustin.In both cases, we’re asking the community
around us how we can connect with it more deeply.That happens most effectively in one-on-one
encounters, but it also happens through programming and capital-planning decisions.When we asked the mayor how St. Augustin
Church and School could build connections with the people of Maniche, he
suggested building a basketball court and a football (soccer) field.Back home, as we discuss the future of St.
Andrew’s youth center, we’ve heard from some of our neighbors about the need
for recreational space, including basketball courts.Perhaps the partnership between St. Andrew’s
and St. Augustin is even more timely than we imagined, given that both parishes
are discerning how to live into God’s call for the Church to reach beyond
itself and take its community seriously, seeking to exist for the benefit of
those who are not its members (paraphrasing Archbishop William Temple, whose
feast day is today).Both parishes are
seeking to become the mission outposts that God has in mind for them to be.Maybe building basketball courts is an
unexpectedly common step.

In our time today, I had the joy of talking with a
seminarian from the Diocese of Haiti, whose first name is Guillian.(I didn’t get her last name, and I’ve
probably misspelled her first name.) Guillian served as one of our translators
today.She has attended Virginia
Theological Seminary and is currently doing field education in Haiti with our
partner priest, Fr. Colbert Estil.Guillian
is on a track to be the fourth woman ordained a priest in Haiti, and she has
walked a brave path to get there.Of
course, she has endured the roadblocks of prejudice related to gender; and she
has had to persevere, in ways I can only begin to imagine, simply to say “yes”
to God’s incredibly difficult call on her life.On top of all that – not to put too fine a point on it – she grew up in
rural Haiti, raised in a mountain village in the southeast.As we walked with our students this afternoon
to visit their homes, Guillian offhandedly said she used to walk 3 hours, one
way, to get to school.I stopped and
checked to ensure I hadn’t misunderstood.Yes:Every day, from kindergarten
through 12th grade, she walked three hours to school, attended class
for 6 hours or so, and walked home another 3 hours before doing homework and
chores to support the life of a family practicing subsistence agriculture.“My brothers and sister stopped going to
school,” Guillian said.“But I was
determined to make a better life.”Absolutely.And, with her life
now being directed toward building the lives of Haitian people through priestly
ministry, Guillian will be “making a better life” in more ways than she can yet
imagine.

The next time I have a 7 p.m. meeting and an early-morning
meeting the next day, or get behind in sermon prep, or miss yet another day
off, I will bring Guillian’s smiling face to mind.

Tuesday, November 5, 2013

We left the Palm Inn about 9 a.m., the tops of our vans
crammed with duffels; and we made two stops in Port au Prince before getting on
the highway for the four-hour trek south to Les Cayes.

Our first stop was St. Vincent’s Episcopal School and
Orphanage.I don’t have the official
history, but the story Stan Shaffer told was this.An Episcopal religious (a nun) in the Order
of St. Margaret decided to sit under a tree and teach children with
disabilities.She did such a wonderful
job that people wanted to build her a school.She made a commitment to serve the children of Port au Prince who
wouldn’t be served otherwise – those with no place to go.Thus was born St. Vincent’s.Today, there are more than 300 kids with
disabilities living there.God knows
where they’d be otherwise.The school
was destroyed in the 2010 earthquake and is partially rebuilt now.For them, it’s a Godsend.I spoke briefly with one young man – Samuel,
who looks to be in his early 20s.He has
twisted legs and gets around in a wheelchair, and he’s been at St. Vincent’s
since childhood.He said simply, “This
is my home.”

Stan also told a story of touring the school once, on a
previous trip, and seeing different kids at work.The deaf kids were making braces for the
physically disabled kids to use – a very loud task with lots of metallic
banging.The physically disabled kids
were leading blind kids around the school grounds.The blind kids were stamping Communion wafers
for the school to sell.And there you
have it:The deaf, the lame, and the
blind – all sorts and conditions of people – comprising God’s family, with the
many members using their various gifts to be the Body of Christ, even providing
the bread for the Eucharistic feast – the Body by which the Body would be fed.Again, we were graced to see an in-breaking
of God’s kingdom as we walked among the kids, sharing photos with them and glimpsing
their joy.

The second stop was at a supplier of solar-powered lights,
gifts for the teachers and staff at the school in Maniche.In a place where electricity is a sometime
thing (and an absent thing at the school), these should help out.And they’ll provide an outward and visible
reminder of how the school’s staff shines Christ’s light into the darkness of
poverty every day.Thanks very much to
St. Andrew’s parishioner Frank Julian for finding the supplier for these
lights.

The drive south was blessedly uneventful, despite a few
opportunities for driving events we’re all grateful to have avoided.

After dinner, the group gathered for reflection time – a regular
part of these trips when we explore what we’ve experienced that day and our own
identities as God’s people sent into relationship with others.Several of us struggle with the term “missionary.”It comes with a lot of baggage, at least for
me.It’s helpful to remember what the
word really means, in an apostolic sense.Like every Christian, the 13 of us are sent by God.And that’s what mission is – the assignment on
which God sends us.That sending most
likely has nothing to do with fixing people, or solving their problems, or even
solving our own.It has to do with
coming to know and love others more deeply, a participative interaction that
leaves everybody changed as a result.In
other words, mission is about relationship.

Tomorrow, we’ll head up the mountain to visit our partner
school in Maniche, St. Augustin’s.Some
of us will take photos and interview kids so we can offer their faces and
stories to the people of St. Andrew’s.Some of us will go into the community and try to talk with local leaders
about the school and how it might serve the community better. Some of us will read to schoolchildren or
interview teachers.I feel certain that
all of us will love the people we encounter – and be changed as a result.

Monday, November 4, 2013

The secular world calls it
synergy. Jesus calls it what happens when two or three are gathered together.
"I will be in the midst of you," he promises. And when that happens, we can
expect the Holy Spirit to start stirring.

Several of us began our day
in Port au Prince driving directly from the airport to a meeting with the Rt.
Rev. Zache Duracin, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Haiti. We brought him
the materials that Carolyn Kroh and her team had assembled for the seminar we'll
be offering in a few days for the 1st and 2nd grade teachers at several
Episcopal schools near Les Cayes. This is the third year that Carolyn has led
this effort to model an alternate approach to Haitian early-childhood education
-- one that honors kids' different learning styles and makes learning
interactive, which has not been the Haitian model. The workshops in the past
two years focused on preschool kids; now the effort is being extended up the
grade levels. In addition, Carolyn and her team have compiled curricula for the
various preschool levels (Haitian schools have no common preschool curricula),
and they've documented kid-focused teaching strategies to align with Haiti's
existing curricula for 1st and 2nd grade. So we presented all this to the
bishop, hoping to gain at least his willingness to let this creep into other
Episcopal schools. Instead, his canon told us later, he embraced it heartily.
He wants to introduce it as a standard for the nation's Episcopal schools, and
he's considering recommending it to the national education minister as a
standard for all Haitian preschools. Not bad work, apparently.

Then came the Spirit's next
move. One of the potential issues in implementing one of these curricula is the
need for manipulatives, especially blocks -- blocks that can be moved and
connected to teach math concepts. There was some discussion about the hassle
and cost of bringing blocks from the States into Haiti. (Shipping is a constant
headache in missionary work here because functionally there is no mail or
package-delivery service, at least in the country outside Port au Prince.) So
what you want your school to have, you have to bring ... or not. As Steve Rock
pointed out, one of the fundamental roadblocks to prosperity here is the absence
of a middle class. So why not create a business opportunity for some folks in
Maniche (or somewhere else nearby) to make wooden blocks for all the Episcopal
schools in Haiti -- maybe for all the schools in Haiti. Identifying the right
people in Maniche would be a great job for the vestry at our partner parish, St.
Augustin, and give them a new stake in their parish's educational mission. We
sat around a table enjoying a late-afternoon drink with the bishop's canon as a
cooling rain began falling. And the Holy Spirit smiled as the kingdom of God
broke into our day.

There were also the smaller
(or not so much smaller) miracles of this good day. First of all, 13 people
from St. Andrew's invested their time, talent, and treasure to leave Kansas City
yesterday and come to Haiti, easily the largest Haiti mission trip I've known.
We arrived with no problem, with all our duffel bags of supplies, and with very
little drama. With the post-earthquake renovations finished at the airport,
security and baggage claim were quick and easy. We spent our day in Port au
Prince having productive meetings and running errands in the most beautiful part
of the city, Petionville. We saw people working their jobs and connecting with
friends and neighbors in the teeming streets. We saw a much cleaner Port au
Prince than what we'd seen before.

None of this is to deny the
lingering sorrow and grief from the earthquake, which you can still hear. Nor
does it ignore the poverty and hunger that bind people just down the mountain
from more prosperous Petionville. But it does recognize that beauty lives and
miracles happen here, every day.

Sunday, July 21, 2013

Two weeks ago today, five of our youth,
Dr. Terri Long, and I met behind HJ’s Youth Center while the good people on
the other side of the street were getting ready for the 8:00 service. We piled into a rental van and drove 10 hours
across the prairie in order to spend a week on the Rosebud Sioux Reservation in
South Dakota.Now, you may be wondering,
“Why in the name of God would you want to do that?”And after 10 hours in the van and coming to a
place of huge social problems, we might have been wondering the same
thing.

I’d like to take a shot at
answering that question and share with you a few things I learned from our time
together.The real treat comes next Sunday – reflections about the experience
from the youth who made the trip.(They’re finishing up another mission experience, Missionpalooza, this
morning.)

Terri and I had both done our homework,
reading up on the Rosebud Reservation.We’d reminded ourselves of the terrible history of the intersection between
the U.S. government and native peoples as European Americans spread west.We’d done a little reading specifically about
the Lakota, or Sioux, peoples on the Great Plains – how they’d defeated U.S.
forces in 1868 and negotiated a settlement that gave them half of what’s now
South Dakota, everything west of the Missouri River.Over time, particularly with the discovery of
gold in the sacred Black Hills, that original reservation was whittled down to
smaller and smaller parcels of land – land from which the buffalo, the key to
their way of life, had been nearly wiped out.We talked a little with the kids about this difficult history during
that 10-hour drive across the Plains, and we described in abstract terms what
we knew we were heading into: a place of serious poverty where we hoped we
might be able to make a difference through our mission trip.

As usually happens with mission trips, most of us in the van had a sense that we were going to the Rosebud to help
people and fix things.That certainly
seemed to be the plan.The group
organizing this trip, YouthWorks, had scheduled two kinds of activities across
the four working days:The kids would
spend two days in hands-on work to build or clean or fix things, and they’d
spend two days working with reservation kids, putting on a vacation Bible
school for them.So the seven of us made
our way to the Rosebud ready to be useful in improving people’s lives, albeit
in the small chunks of work you can do in a short amount of time.

And the work got done.We painted the community center in the
village of St. Francis, and we did a fair amount of cleaning and painting in
the St. Francis elementary school, where the 60 youth and adults stayed.And the youth planned and put on a vacation
Bible school.So what we did
mattered.The community-center painting
was done so well that one of the tribal leaders asked a YouthWorks staffer to
come and be recognized at a tribal council meeting.And the VBS was a welcome moment of fun, love,
and hope for the reservation kids.So,
in the context of the Gospel reading we heard this morning, the Martha in each
of us was feeling pretty good, having worked hard and gotten our hands
dirty.It’s the same feeling we came
away with yesterday from the workday at Southwest High School.

But as it turned out, we really weren’t in
South Dakota to satisfy the Martha in each of us.Oddly enough, the mission trip was much more
of a Mary experience.And as Jesus says,
the time when we weren’t “worried and
distracted” by our many tasks was actually the richest part of our trip there –
definitely the “one thing” he wants us to focus on, the “better part” he asks
us to choose (Luke 10:41-42).

That “better part” of our trip had begun
long before we got there.It began years
ago, when the people from YouthWorks came to the Rosebud and began getting to
know the community.YouthWorks has been
hosting mission trips to the Rosebud for more than a decade; so when a bunch of
white kids show up on the reservation, the Lakota people know why they’re
there.In addition, earlier this summer,
the four 20-somethings who ran the mission experience spent time themselves getting
to know people in the community.In
fact, the young man in charge this summer is a teacher at the St. Francis high
school, so he’s there year-round.That
“one thing,” that “better part” Jesus mentions in the Gospel reading, is what
we were really on the Rosebud to do: to begin building relationships with the
people there and, through them, deepening our relationship with Christ.

That was the subtext of everything we
did on this trip, but it was especially evident one day.On the second workday for our group, after
we’d painted the community center, we traveled 20 miles to the village of Mission.There, we spent the day in a fascinating
place, a combination restaurant and youth center called Buffalo Jump.This operation is run by a woman named Noella
Red Hawk.Noella is a true entrepreneur,
both in terms of her restaurant (I didn’t expect to find a coffee bar with
Italian ices on the reservation) and especially in terms of being what’s called
a social entrepreneur.Buffalo Jump
offers reservation youth a place they can experience a contrast reality to the
despair they see all around them.The
Rosebud is an incredibly difficult place to live.The unemployment rate there is 83 percent.1Alcoholism is rampant, estimated by people on
the ground to run at about 80 percent of adults.There is little hope in this environment; and
as a result, the Rosebud has literally the highest rate of teen suicide in the
nation.2This is a place
where it’s unbelievably hard to grow up.

So Noella Red Hawk – when she isn’t
raising her daughter or running her restaurant – runs the Sicangu Lakota Youth
Center at Buffalo Jump, her own 501(c)(3).3There she provides suicide intervention.She offers tutoring with school work and help
in getting youth ready to enter the workforce.She provides a “free teen store” where young people can pick up necessities
like clothes and toilet paper and toothpaste – things our kids would never
imagine going without at home.And she
offers programs to preserve the Lakota culture among the youth.The day we were there, we helped prepare the
supplies kids would need for a week-long horse camp that she and her
husband, Shane, were about to put on for local kids, teaching them about the Lakota
people’s connection to the land and the way of life they knew for
centuries.

So seven Marthas headed out across the
Plains two weeks ago looking for work.Instead, what we really found was relationship.The best part of the trip was sitting at the
feet of Jesus, in the person of this Lakota powerhouse named Noella, and
learning the “one thing” that Mary chose in the Gospel reading – relationship
that changes lives.

It shouldn’t have been a surprise.Every time we go to Haiti, we live out the
same truth.As Chris Nazar said in a
testimony one Sunday a few months ago, he doesn’t go to Maniche every year just to paint
the school or take pictures of kids for the Advent cards.He goes because the teachers, the headmaster,
and our partner priest have become his friends.

It’s the same truth we remembered in an
outward and visible way yesterday, at Southwest High School.It’s great to go paint and clean and garden,
getting the place ready for the new school year.But what really matters is that St. Andrew’s
people gather every month with people from other neighborhood churches and
people from the school as the Southwest Faith-Based Coalition, finding ways to
support the teachers and staff, and trying to enhance learning for the
students.What really matters is that our
people know people there, and that the principal, Ed Richardson, isn’t just a
colleague but a friend – and a parishioner.

You’ll hear more about the trip to South
Dakota next Sunday from the rest of the group, and I’ll be as interested as you
are to hear what the youth took away from the experience.But you’ll also be hearing more about this as
the year goes on, because I think it’s a pretty safe bet that our youth will
continue to build a relationship with Noella and the Sicangu Lakota Youth
Center.I think that may well be why God
sent us to the Rosebud this summer.Just
as we have partners in Haiti, I think the youth may have found a partner on the
reservation.

I am very proud of our kids.They went to a place where it would have been
easy to become worried and distracted by the many things that need to be
done.But instead, they’ve chosen the
better part – not just being volunteer tourists but being sent into a partner
relationship.And sitting with Mary at
the feet of our Lord and Savior, I would dare to say:That makes Jesus smile.

Sunday, June 2, 2013

[Sermon from June 2, 2013, celebrating the return of St. Andrew's to its renovated worship space.]

Well, let me say, “Welcome home.”This place cleans up pretty nicely.Just glancing around, you may not get the
full scope of the last two months’ work, so let me list some of the
highlights:The flooring in the nave has
been replaced, so it all matches.The
broken pews have been fixed.The walls
and ceiling have been painted, and what would be the keel and the ribs of the
“ship” of the nave have been stained to match the rest of the wood.The lighting is much brighter.The sound system and speakers have been
replaced. And the work was completed
within budget and on time.

We’re pleased to have representatives
from Pearce Construction, as well as some of the subcontractors with us here
this morning.Thank you for your holy
work to renew this holy space.And to
the members of the Facilities Commission and Interiors Committee, and to the
staff – and particularly to Mary Heausler, our stunning junior warden – thank
you, thank you, thank you.You all have
served admirably as stewards of the household of God.As Jesus says in one of his parables, “Well done, good and faithful servant; you have been
trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter
into the joy of your master.” (Matt 25:23)After this experience, you may not want
to be in charge of anything else, but I think the point is how much God
appreciates your work.

So we’ve spent the past
two months worshipping in the Undercroft – sitting in a semicircle around the
altar and pulpit, much closer to the action than usual, singing some different music
with different instruments, and hearing responses from you after the sermons
(at the 10:15 service).It was a chance to
experiment, so we did.And as you know,
over the past three weeks, we asked for your feedback about these changes
through a quick survey.Even someone
with my level of expertise in
statistics can interpret the results for three of the questions on the survey.Overwhelmingly, people enjoyed the different
music, the different instruments, and being closer to “the action” and to each
other.About inviting parishioners to
respond to the sermons, the survey results were a little less clear – a bimodal
distribution at both ends of the curve, if you remember your stats class.A plurality of you really liked the sermons done
that way – and coming in second were those of you who never want to see it
again.Welcome to the Episcopal Church.

So what did we learn from worshipping in
the undercroft?If nothing else, we
learned that space matters.Space
doesn’t just have utilitarian value; it has theological content.You may like one space better than another,
and the reason why might well have something to do with how you relate to God.

The comments from the survey captured a
lot about what the worship space downstairs communicated theologically.This was my favorite comment:“It feels so good [in the Undercroft], like
everyone loving each other. When we go back upstairs to the nave, I hope we’ll
keep this spirit alive.”With all its challenges,
our worship downstairs did a great job of reflecting the immanence, the intimacy,
of God’s presence.One of the things
that differentiates Christians from people of other faiths is that we put a lot
of stock in the doctrine of the Incarnation: the idea that the sovereign Lord
of the universe “became flesh and lived among us” in Jesus Christ (John 1:14).God came to save and redeem humanity from the
inside out, enabling God to experience our life and sanctify it directly.We could feel this in the Undercroft, being close
to the preacher breaking open the Word, close to the Altar where bread and wine
became Christ’s Body and Blood, close to each other – even able to look into
each other’s eyes as we worshipped.It
was a beautiful experience of the immanent presence of God.

And here we are, in a space that
communicates something different about the divine.Here, the arches and vaulted ceiling and
stained-glass windows draw your perspective up, always up.The three main sections are on three
different levels:First you have the
nave, the ship of the faithful for your voyage of discipleship.It’s at street level, welcoming everyone
aboard.Then you have the chancel or the
choir, where the clergy and musicians lead our prayers and praise.It’s raised slightly and separated from the
nave by this little wall, seeming to imply that somehow holier work happens up
here.And finally, up another step, through
the gate, and past the rail, we have the sanctuary, the holy of holies where
the Body and Blood of Christ are consecrated.In the old days, as some of you will remember, only ordained people and
acolytes could even enter the
sanctuary – well, and the Altar Guild, who were really in charge.My point isn’t to critique the architecture
of this beautiful space but simply to observe that it communicates something
other than the immanent, personal presence of God.This space gives us an experience of
transcendence, of God’s divine otherness – beautiful and majestic and set apart
from the day-to-day-ness of our lives.Here in this amazing space, we know
who’s in charge.And it’s not us.

We proclaimed it in the psalm this
morning, the perfect psalm for this Sunday when we’ve come back into the temple
of the Lord:“[G]reat is the Lord and greatly to be praised; he is more
to be feared than all gods….Oh, the majesty
and magnificence of his presence!Oh,
the power and the splendor of his sanctuary! …Worship the Lord in the
beauty of holiness; let the whole earth tremble before him.Tell it out among the nations, ‘The Lord is King!’” (Psalm 96:4,6,9-10 BCP)You come into this space, and hear this organ, and see the light
streaming through these windows, and feel yourself drawn into the presence of
the risen Christ towering over the high altar – how can you not know that God is King?“Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be
glad; let the sea thunder, and all that is in it,” for God is God, and I am not (Psalm 96:11 BCP).Many of us, if
pressed, would have to say this realization isn’t as self-evident as we might
hope.In fact, we might have to admit it
comes as a surprising relief to say
that God is God, and I am not.

In our worship here, we enact mysteries
that seek to capture ultimate mystery:that the God who’s always been king, who created the heavens and the
earth – this eternal sovereign is enthroned again and again, right here in this
space.Every week, we remember the timeless
reality that God’s rule is both constant and constantly new, both forever and
forever surprising to us.The people of
ancient Israel had no trouble wrapping their minds around this mystery of a God
who was, and is, and is to come.We remind
ourselves of the same truth here as we consecrate the bread and wine,
remembering out loud that “Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come
again.”Every week in our worship here,
the Word and the prayers and the sacrament remind us that God was, and is, and willbe God, no matter what.

So why do it?Why do we enact this truth, week after week
after week?It’s not because God needs
the reminder.It’s for our own benefit –
and thereby, for the benefit of this world God loves so much.Gathered in this place of transcendent
beauty, performing rites handed down across the centuries, we enthrone God in
our own hearts, over and over again.And
in our hearts, the Lord of all creation takes on flesh and dwells in the world once again.You and I become the incarnation of divine
majesty, the Body of Christ given for the world God has made.We look into each other’s faces, and we love
the people we see.We look into the faces
of people we don’t know, and we reach out hands and hearts to them.We look across the street and see a
neighborhood of people who can’t name the spiritual home they need.We look down the street to Southwest High
School or Gordon Parks Elementary – or we look across the sea to our partner
school in Haiti – and we see children of God who need healing in ways that,
miraculously, we can help bring about.When our hearts are formed and reformed here
to honor the majesty of our divine king, we are made into nothing less than Jesus’
own body, broken for each other and for those we don’t yet know.

So, as we go forth from this glorious
space today – fed by Christ and with Christ to be Christ in the world – let me
offer you one small challenge.Estimating generously, when we come to church on a Sunday, we spend half
a day in the kind of transformative worship I’ve been describing.What would happen if we worshipped God that
way the other six and a half days of the week?I don’t mean spending all your time at church – just the opposite.I mean bringing church into all of your
time.What if, every day, we praised the
Lord, and blessed God’s name, and declared God’s wonders among the peoples?
(Psalm 96:1-3)What if, just once every
day, we actually spoke of the fact
that God is God, and we are not?It
might start with simply saying grace around your dinner table.It might grow into saying grace when the
waiter brings you lunch at a restaurant.It might be simply observing that God did a great job with the sunset
that day.It might be a quick “Praise
God!” when someone tells you good news.It might be “I’ll pray for you” when the news is not so good.

These small acts might not seem to
matter a bit, in the greater scheme of things.But when we’re tempted to think this way, that’s when this beautiful
space whispers to us and reminds us of the lesson it never ceases to
teach:that we’re called to “tell it out
among the nations:the Lordis king!”
(Psalm 96:10 BCP).